open source News - Page 41 of 92 - CNX Software

September 23, 2019February 29, 2020 by Stephen Vicinanza - 6 Comments

HEGduino IoT Real-time Neurofeedback Platform Aims to Increase Brain Function (Crowdfunding)

The HEGduino Alaskit has developed a way to measure the blood-oxygen levels in the brain and create a biofeedback system that is said to increase brain function. The new tech is called HEGduino and is a connection between a biofeedback method and an IoT platform. Past Reported Medical SBCs In the past, CNX has covered several health-based platforms for the Raspberry Pi (Healthy Pi HAT) and ESP32 (Hearty Patch, ECG reader) medical SBCs. HEG Particulars The HEG in HEGduino stands for Hemoencephalography, a neurofeedback technique similar to EEG measurements in brainwave activity. The difference is HEG can measure neural activity based on neurovascular coupling, which can be approached through near infrared and passive infrared techniques – both of which are ways to cerebral blood flow can be matched to metabolic activity. HEG Functions The HEG is a way to alter brain function through a series of “training” sessions based […]

September 16, 2019November 25, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

Linux 5.3 Release – Main Changes, Arm, MIPS & RISC-V Architectures

Linus Torvalds has just announced the release of Linux 5.3: So we’ve had a fairly quiet last week, but I think it was good that we ended up having that extra week and the final rc8. Even if the reason for that extra week was my travel schedule rather than any pending issues, we ended up having a few good fixes come in, including some for some bad btrfs behavior. Yeah, there’s some unnecessary noise in there too (like the speling fixes), but we also had several last-minute reverts for things that caused issues. One _particularly_ last-minute revert is the top-most commit (ignoring the version change itself) done just before the release, and while it’s very annoying, it’s perhaps also instructive. What’s instructive about it is that I reverted a commit that wasn’t actually buggy. In fact, it was doing exactly what it set out to do, and did it […]

September 15, 2019September 20, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

PineTime is a $25 Smartwatch / Companion for PinePhone Linux Phone

We’ve recently seen Linux smartphones are coming in a few weeks or months, but the $150 PinePhone may not come alone, and soon be joined by a $25 companion, namely PineTime smartwatch. That’s what we learned through a tweet by Pine64 explaining the PineTime is a Linux smartphone companion that can run FreeRTOS or Arm Mbed operating systems. It will be a side-project however, and the focus is still on PinePhone and Pinebook Pro, meaning it will take a while depending on the level of community engagement. Available information is limited to the discussion in the tweet at this stage, but we do know the watch will be made of zinc alloy & plastic, come with a charging dock, a 20 mm wristband, an heart-rate monitor and last several days on a charge. We’ve also seen people interested in porting ZephyrOS to the watch, and others would like to make […]

September 11, 2019December 9, 2021 by Stephen Vicinanza - 8 Comments

Signet High-Capacity Thumbdrive Supports 2FA, Password & Secure Data Storage (Crowdfunding)

Signet HC Crowdfunding Started The latest version of the Signet thumbdrive is the Signet HC. The HC has a number of enhanced features and a lower price point, making it an attractive alternative to other high-security flash drives. The drive is high capacity storage, with secure storage technology, 2 Factor Authentication (2FA) token and encryption. It also has a password manager and enhanced database features. The company has started its crowdfunding campaign and there are several device quantity options and peripherals. Features of the Signet HC The Nth Dimension has announced the Signet HC recently, bringing to the forefront of its latest device, the all-in-one aspects of the drive’s capabilities. The Signet HC is certainly positioned to be one of the top featured, encrypted password protected, and 2FA storage devices of its size. The data on the drive is encrypted, and password protected and can be accessed through cross-platform […]

September 4, 2019September 4, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 10 Comments

Android 10 Released – What’s New?

Google released the first Android Q preview in March, and after several more preview, the company has finally released the latest version of the popular operating system which will simply be called Android 10, since Google dropped dessert names which previously led to confusion. What’s new in Android 10? Here’s a list of the new features that you can expect from Android 10: Privacy protection improvements – There’s more granular control over what apps can or cannot do in Android 10. Security improvements – Support for TLS 1.3 (up to 40% faster than TLS 1.2), and passive authentication methods such as face recognition Support for foldables and innovative new screens Sharing shortcuts – Let users jump directly into another app to share content. Settings Panels – Floating UI invoked from an app to show system settings that users might need to adjust. Smart Reply in notifications – Contextual actions in […]

September 3, 2019September 12, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 9 Comments

Huawei Releases their Open Source Ark Compiler for HarmonyOS

Back in May, there were rumors Huawei was working on HongMeng OS as an alternative to Android mobile operating systems, as the OS was brought to light due to US sanctions against the company. The new operating system was later confirmed and will be called HarmonyOS outside of China. A few days ago I received a tip in Chinese with this link explaining Huawei had released the open-source Ark compiler for HarmonyOS aka OpenArkCompiler. The compiler works with Java apps and converts the source into AArch64 binaries. The illustration below implies it should also work with C, C++, JavaScript, and Kotlin programming languages. Three links were shared in the announcement: The official website – https://www.openarkcompiler.cn/home The code hosting website – https://code.opensource.huaweicloud.com/openarkcompiler/openarkcompiler/home A mirror for the code – https://gitee.com/harmonyos/OpenArkCompiler As a side note, I had never heard about Gitee, and the site is an alternative to Github in China, which may […]

August 28, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

OrangeCrab is an Open Source Hardware, Feather-Compatible Lattice ECP5 FPGA Board

Lattice ECP5 FPGA powered OrangeCrab is the work of Greg Davill who designed the Adafruit Feather-compatible board in KiCAD, crowdsourced schematics/PCB checking and published his progress on Twitter, and published the files of the open source hardware board on Github. OrangeCrab board hardware specifications: FPGA – Lattice ECP5 25/45/85 variants System Memory – Up to 8Gbit DDR3 Memory (x16) Storage – 128Mbit QSPI FLASH Memory (Bitstream + User storage), 4-bit MicroSD socket USB – Micro USB connector, full-speed direct USB connection to FPGA Programming – 10-pin FPGA programming header Expansion – I/O’s broken out via 30 through holes: GPIO, SPI, I2C, Analog, … 7x diff pairs, 1x single ended only Misc – Reset Button, charge LED (Green: external power, Yellow: when charging, No color: when running off battery), 48MHz Oscillator Power Supply – 5V via USB port, battery header for LiPo battery + battery charger chip Dimensions – Adafruit Feather […]

August 16, 2019August 16, 2019 by Stephen Vicinanza - 14 Comments

CutiePi Open Source Tablet uses Raspberry Pi Compute Module 3

The announcement of the CutiePi, an open source tablet-based on the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 3 comes a bit late for the Pi-based tablet/laptop space. We have reported on some of the more versatile tablets using the Raspberry Pi platform, the Diskio Pi 13.3” DIY Tablet and the RasPad tablet kit, with a few more Raspberry Pi-based tablet/laptop kits also listed in the same article. Timeline and Pricing CutiePi Tablet has no firm release date, but the company is saying late 2019 for launch. The development team is also saying everything is subject to change, but look for the pricing to be USD $150 – $250. Click to Enlarge How CutiePi is Different The tablet is different in its thinner design and in the software designed specifically to use Linux Raspbian OS for a touch screen platform. There are readily available source code and case plans for the ambitious developer […]